A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.
Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
True joy is a serene and sober motion; and they are miserably out so that take laughing for rejoicing; the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind.
What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
